Laser-etched quartz will store data for hundreds of millions of years

Hitachi says it's about to solve our data problems, with the
announcement that information could potentially be preserved
for hundreds of millions of years if it's laser-encoded onto slabs
of quartz glass. The downside -- you can't fit all that much on to
each piece.

Hitachi concedes that the technique, developed in collaboration
with professor Kiyotaka Miura of Kyoto University, is about
longevity and does not tackle the more pressing problem of managing
the vast and growing amount of world data. Nevertheless, as it
turns out, the chemical properties of a piece of quartz are a bit
of an embarrassment for the average hard drive. While the former can (according to experiments
carried out at Kyoto University's lab) withstand temperatures of
1,000 degrees Celsius for two hours and have its information
"played" back without "degradation" using an optical microscope,
the latter will probably fail within a decade in average
conditions. The more old school the data storage method, it seems, the better the chance of
survival -- Hitachi says tape (remember that) will last between 15
to 30 years.

Since the method -- which works by imprinting a series of dots
in binary code (100 at a time) using femtosecond laser pulses onto
four layers of quartz -- can only store around 40MB on an area
about 2cm squared and 2mm thick (a hard drive can store a terabit
in the same surface area), it's likely to be used for the long-term
storage of "historically important items such as cultural artifacts
and public documents, as well as data that individuals want to
leave for posterity".

Hitachi calls it "CD-level digital data volume" -- but imagine
if you could chuck that CD into a burning pool of lava and use it
again later. The point is not quantity, it's quality. The quartz
glass is basically impervious (unless you smash it) -- it can
withstand water and magnetism and still function.

"The volume of data being created every day is exploding, but in
terms of keeping it for later generations, we haven't necessarily
improved since the days we inscribed things on stones," said
Hitachi researcher Kazuyoshi Torii.

Hitachi says that as society continues its rapidly accelerating
shift from paper to digital data, there should be a long-term
storage option like this. Artefacts like the Dead Sea Scrolls need
to be stored in special temperature-controlled rooms -- Hitachi's
method is the future-proof version of this for your data. The
method is, however, going to preliminary be aimed at companies with
"large amounts of important data to preserve, rather than
individuals," said Hitachi spokesperson Tomiko Kinoshita. The
company believes that by 2015 the system will be commercially
viable and companies will be able to send data to Hitachi for
conversion.

It's a shame the technique will not be immediately accessible to
everyone. It would be nice if everyone had the chance to get one
thing down for perpetuity -- to put down one piece of information
and limit yourself to selecting only the most important details of
your life, in the same manner that projects like This Is Your Jam
ask you to sum up your mood/taste with one song, could prove an
interesting exercise. Like TIYJ, the new technique is about only
choosing the best, which is subjective, so perhaps their should be
a few global questionnaires on how the method could be used to
store some of the world's most precious data for future
generations.

The technique, developed from Hitachi's own laser tomography
storage system, devised back in 2009, is being slated as a
"semi-permanent" storage system for digital data (we'd like to see
what the company comes up for the permanent spectrum, considering
they already have the next few hundred million years covered). A
spokesperson will go into more detail on the technology and its
potential uses at the International Symposium on Optical Memory in
Tokyo on September 30.

Comments

Theres already a thousand year cd writer m-disc by LG. But will the stream of 1s and 0 s that come off any storage format mean anything to the readers of these discs assuming they still have a player. Could you read a 5 1/4" floppy?. I have a family photo album with hundred year old photos in and I think the best way to add to it is to print photos out.

Jeff

Sep 25th 2012

If this took off it you could have data storage facilities like in superman when he visits the Fortress of Solitude :)

Jim

Sep 26th 2012

Given info are very good, but I want to know more about Femtosecond Laser product.